Hopkins Communications becomes Hopkins

Cork Agency Completes Founder’s Final Vision, One Year After Her Passing

Hopkins Communications becomes Hopkins - more than marketing, marking 36 years and completing the final project founder Mary Hopkins worked on before she passed away.

A Cork agency that began with a woman, a vision, and an electronic sign over Patrick’s Bridge has unveiled a landmark new brand identity - completing the final project its founder worked on before she passed away and marking 36 years of one of Ireland’s most remarkable stories in independent business.

Hopkins, known for more than three decades as Hopkins Communications, has today launched its new brand identity: Hopkins - more than marketing. The rebrand encompasses a new name, a new visual identity, and a new home at wearehopkins.ie, and represents the most significant evolution in the agency’s history.

Mark (Managing Director) and Judy (Managing Partner) brought the concept to founder Mary, who immediately understood and embraced it. She threw herself into the project, championing the rebrand, contributing to the thinking behind the new identity, and helping to shape the positioning that would define the agency's next chapter.

As the work progressed, it became clear that this was to be Mary's final gift to the business she had built and loved. Hopkins Communications was due to launch the rebrand in September 2025, to mark the agency’s 35th anniversary, when Mary passed away suddenly. Today, shortly after the first anniversary of Mary's passing on 8th September, Mark, Judy and the team at Hopkins have completed their founder's final vision for the business she built from the ground up in Cork in 1990.

The decision to drop 'Communications' from the name was deliberate, and a long time coming. After 36 years of continuous evolution, Hopkins had grown far beyond what that word could capture. Today, the agency delivers advertising, PR, events, digital and social media, graphic design, print, and web design and development - all under one roof, for each client, with a bespoke integrated strategy. The tagline 'more than marketing' makes that reality visible.

“This rebrand means far more to Judy and I than simply changing how Hopkins looks,” said Mark Hopkins, Managing Director. “Mum championed this from the very beginning. She had real input into shaping what it became, and she believed deeply that our identity needed to reflect everything Hopkins had grown into over 36 years. That was always how she approached the business - constantly looking ahead, never standing still. Losing her so suddenly, just as we were about to launch, made completing this more important than ever. We’re incredibly proud to finish what she started and carry her vision for Hopkins into the next chapter.”

Judy Hopkins, Managing Partner, added: “Growing up, Hopkins was always part of our lives. Mum built this business through relationships, hard work and an extraordinary ability to see what was coming before anyone else did, and those values are still at the very heart of what we do today. ‘More than marketing’ captures who Hopkins is now, but it also says something about where we’re going. We’re incredibly proud of the legacy Mum created, and our focus now is on building on that foundation, continuing to push forward and taking Hopkins into the next generation.”

Michael Barry of Barry & Fitzwilliam, one of the agency's longest-standing clients and a friend of the Hopkins family, said: "Mary helped shape our story with infectious enthusiasm and was instrumental in the success of Barry & Fitzwilliam and our drinks brands. But more than that, she celebrated our milestones as if they were her own. That spirit carries on today through her children Mark and Judy."

Hopkins has grown from a one-woman operation in 1990 to a team of 14 specialists - the largest independent integrated marketing communications agency in Munster and one of the largest outside Dublin.

Where It All Began
The Hopkins story starts in 1990, when Mary Hopkins founded the agency in Cork from an office above Porter’s on Patrick’s Street. Initially operating under the Metrovision name, she had electronic advertising signs across four locations – on Patrick’s Bridge in Cork, Sarsfield Bridge in Limerick and Dublin and Belfast- making her one of the very few advertisers in Ireland operating electronic signage at scale across four cities simultaneously. Those who knew her well simply called her 'Mary the Sign.' It was meant as a compliment. If you wanted to be seen, Mary was the person to call.

Some of her clients included Ryanair, the Irish Bonding Group, Arks Ltd, Rowntree’s, Bulmers and Aer Lingus. She later sold the Belfast, Dublin and Limerick signs to focus her energy on expanding into new services in Cork - a decisive, forwardthinking move that would characterise her entire career. The last sign over Patrick’s Bridge in Cork was maintained by the family until Mark, Judy and Dave changed the last of the 6,144 bulbs in the early 2000s before they sold the sign to the Cork Opera House.

Away from the agency, Mary was breaking barriers long before the conversation caught up with her. At a time when women in senior positions in Cork’s civic and business life were the exception, she was not only running her own agency but serving as Chair of the Corporate Relations Committee at Cork Chamber, Chair of its Annual Dinner Task Force and one of the first two women to attend the Cork Chamber Annual Dinner with over 900 men, the first female President of The Rotary Club Cork, President of Network Cork, and a member of the Governing Body of University College Cork.

Mary Hopkins was, above all else, a woman who loved life. She was happiest with her husband Dave, their grandchildren Jack and Anna, on long drives to West Cork, or planning her next adventure. She had a sharp sense of humour that never left her - her favourite thing about Hopkins, she once said, was that it kept Mark and Judy busy so she could finally relax. She was the heart of everything.

What ‘more than marketing’ Means
The phrase 'more than marketing' is not a strapline. It is a description. For 36 years, Hopkins has delivered something that most agencies can’t, and that most clients don’t realise is possible until they experience it. Rather than working with a separate agency for advertising, another for PR, another for digital and another for events, Hopkins clients work with one cohesive team that understands the whole picture.

Every channel informs every other. Every campaign is built around a single, clear strategy. One team, one strategy, one bill. The detail that speaks most clearly about who Hopkins is sits in the logo itself. The letters “kin” in Hopkins are deliberately connected — a quiet, intentional nod to the family at the heart of the business, and to the values of unity, trust and partnership that extend to every client relationship. The lime green dot above the letter “i” carries its own meaning: a spark of fresh thinking, of innovation, of the restless curiosity that has defined Hopkins since Mary first switched on the sign over Patrick’s Bridge in 1990.

Mark and Judy Hopkins are focused on growing the business, deepening client relationships, expanding the team, and continuing to promote Cork and Irish businesses on a national and international scale — just as their mother always did.

“Hopkins has always been more than marketing,” said Mark Hopkins. “Mum knew that. The team knows that. Now everyone will.”

A New Home in a Historic Building In 2011
Hopkins moved to its current headquarters at Media House, Crawford Business Park, Crosses Green - in a building that carries its own extraordinary piece of Cork history. Media House is part of the old Beamish and Crawford brewery stables, a magnificent Edwardian complex built in 1902 to house the dray horses that pulled the brewery’s delivery wagons through the streets of Cork. The stables were designed to combine the practical demands of a working brewery with what architectural historians have called “English whimsy” - half-timbered Tudor-style facades, rooftop ventilators, and a quality of construction that has endured well over a century. That the stables carry the Crawford name is not by coincidence. Beamish and Crawford was founded in 1792 on South Main Street - just minutes from where Hopkins sits today. William Horatio Crawford used the wealth it generated to fund the Crawford School of Art - now the Crawford Art Gallery. The streets, galleries and institutions that define Cork city today were, in no small part, shaped by the families whose horses once stabled in the very building where Hopkins now works.

For more, see the new home for Hopkins - more than marketing at wearehopkins.ie or follow the story on their social media accounts @wearehopkins.